Samantha Jean, writer

My name is Samantha Jean. I'm a writer and aspiring author working on a novel series called The Children of Chaos. The first book of the series is Télos which means End in Greek. I am currently working on sending out query letters in the attempt to land an agent and get my story published.I've loved books all my life. When I was in elementary school, my favorite series was Nancy Drew. I don't remember exactly when it was, but the first time I ever thought about writing a book was when a contest was announced to write the next Nancy Drew case. I remember thinking, "I could do that. Wouldn't it be cool!" I didn't, but the seed was planted. By the time I was in middle school, I'd advanced to reading Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, and Mary Higgins Clark. I was big into thriller mysteries. I think it was the summer of 7th grade that I took Stephen King's PET CEMETERY with me on our annual beach vacation. That book scared me so badly, I couldn't sleep almost the entire week. It didn't help that the house was unfamiliar, stood about 30 feet up in the air on stilts, and it was the stormiest summer I remember ever having at the island.In 8th grade, I started writing my own thriller mysteries. My first short story, THE HAND, was a required writing piece for English class which I adorned with stamped black spiders. We had to read it to the class too. After I finished the oral presentation part, the entire classroom was quiet. I thought for sure I'd done horribly. I don't remember who started the applause, but everyone joined in and my friends whispered their "wows" as I passed them to sit down. When I got the paper back, I was shocked to find a red 110 on the score line. The teacher pulled me aside and told me it was the best story any of her students had ever turned in and the first time she'd ever given a score higher than 100 for that particular writing assignment. I still have the original story with the grading paper attached.That was the true beginning of my career as a writer. In high school, I continued keeping a journal which I'd begun in elementary school, wrote in faithfully, and ended up having several volumes. I started a very dark story that I intended to turn into a novella but never finished. I turned all my teenage angst into making posters about Kurt Cobain and writing poetry. I wrote somewhere in the range of 200 poems, mostly freestyle. In 10th grade, I submitted some poetry to be included in the high school literary magazine CHRYSALIS. One of my poems titled YESTERMORROW was selected and printed next to a picture of a 'cellular phone' inside someone's car. I found out from my younger sister, who was on the CHRYSALIS staff a few years later, that my poem was being used as an example of the creative talent highschoolers possess in order to get sponsors for the magazine. I still have a copy of the magazine too.At 16 years of age, I decided to skip my senior year and joint enrolled full-time at a local community college. Robert Jordan's WHEEL OF TIME series became my favorite, and I spent countless hours listening to the Cheiftains while reading the series when I should've been studing theorems for my Calculus II course. I didn't end up graduating with honors or anything, but I had a free year of college already under my belt, and I met my soulmate in the process. We got married two years later and my writing focused on churning out college papers. My creative muse became stiffled as I started changing diapers and, in all honesty, I didn't even think about writing anymore. Even my favorite pasttime of reading 'grownup books' took a backseat as BEDTIME FOR BABY BOP, BARNEY'S IN OUT AND ALL AROUND and Dr. Seuss (especially GO DOG GO & A FISH OUT OF WATER) filled my days and nights.But the reason I stopped reading was the same reason I started again. My kids. There are five of them now, all so funny and creative and special in their own unique way. They are my inspiration. See, for us, It doesn't matter how old they get, we read together as a family still, nightly. Sure, some nights movies take the place of books, but even tonight, as I'm writing this, my two oldest boys are listening to the audio recording of the 2nd book in Suzanne Collins UNDERLAND CHRONICLES instead of watching Tom & Jerry battle it out on a pirate ship.As the older kids started reading bigger and more-grownup books, the selected reading material for our nightly ventures into fantastical worlds became bigger and more-grownup too. I don't know how it happened, but my oldest son ended up loving stories about pirates and my only daughter loved vampires. I wanted to get them something they would both enjoy but thought it highly unlikely to ever find one book to make everyone happy. That's when we stumbled upon The Vampirates series by Justin Somper in October 2009. The world he created is amazing! And it combined our two favorites, pirates and vampires. Better yet, it captivated my entire family - including my husband who, until that point, hadn't really enjoyed our nightly reading material. We tore through the series, reading book after book, anxious to get our hands on the next one before we'd even finished the last. By February 2010, despite the fact that we'd moved to a new state during those five months, we'd finished all four of the books already published in the series. My kids were devastated when they discovered the next book wouldn't be available in the US until August 2010. I tried to find another series they would be just as interested in, but we didn't come across another series they all agreed upon for several weeks. My kids wanted more Vampirates and didn't want to wait.I wasn't about to attempt to tell the next story in Somper's tale (which I ordered from overseas after discovering it was published for the UK in March instead of August), but I wanted to give them something with pirates and vampires which they could listen to and one day read on their own. So, I started writing again. I quickly discovered pirates were not my forte and, knowing next to nothing about boats, couldn't even pretend to come up with anything that could pass as mildly believable. But, I could tell a vampire story.The project started out as something where I would write one chapter and then read it aloud to them. They were my first Beta Readers, asking questions and giving advice, as well as my first fans. Something clicked for me after I finished the second chapter, like a locked door opened and I could see a whole world full of characters and stories to be told. The version they initially heard no longer exists as I've revised the story several times. The story that has taken it's place is more defined and intricately woven together. I'm very excited about this project and look forward to sharing my world with all of you!